Barcelona

After another day at sea, on Monday morning, we docked in Barcelona. Brenda and I had a short stay here while on vacation in 2013, but we restricted our wanderings mostly to the area around La Sagrada Familia and the Gaudí landmarks.

Yesterday, we took a 2.5-hour walking tour of the historic Gothic Quarter and Born area. Our guide was a young American woman who's been living in Barcelona for seven years. She not only gave us the highlights of Barcelona's long history and descriptions of the 700 to 800 year old buildings we saw, but she also told us about some of the quirks of Calalonia.

At Christmas, Santa is not really The Man here. Instead, families go out into the woods, select a log, dress it up, and call it Caga Tio, also known as the poop log. The log is cared for and kept warm over the days leading up to Christmas, and on the big day, kids beat on it with sticks until it shits out presents.

There's another Yule character, El Caganer, who is hidden amongst the characters in the Nativity scenes.
The weird thing is that El Caganer wears a traditional Catalan hat and is always depicted squatting with his pants around his ankles and a pile of poop under his butt. There's a store here that sells only Caganer figures of all sorts, including politicians, actors, and musicians.

There seems to be an unusual obsession with feces in Catalonia.

Barcelona was initially a walled city, and although most of the original wall has been built over or destroyed, there are still four towers standing at one of the entrances to the old city. If you look at the drawing of the original city in the photos, the two round towers and two square towers at the bottom of the drawing are the ones in my photos.

After the tour, we stopped at a little local tapas bar for some snacks and a beer before heading back to the ship.

Sorry, despite the crazy number and beauty of the ancient churches in the Gothic Quarter, I didn't take any photos simply because pictures don't do them justice.

And that's it for Spain, next stop Italia.Read more